Hailed as the Queen of the New York avant garde, Laurie Anderson has many strings to her (self-made) “Tape-bow Violin”. As part of the 28th Macau International Music Festival, she will perform The Language of the Future at Mount Fortress on October 18.
With a career that spans over 40 years, using nearly every artistic expression possible, collaborating with numerous creative heavyweights and consistently breaking new ground at an unflinching pace, it’s easy to lose your footing in the world that is all things Laurie Anderson. However, as the New Yorker recently pointed out, these are all simply means to support her ultimate pursuit – the art of storytelling.
Today, at the age of 67, Anderson continues to travel the planet (and the moon on occasion, see 'NASA and the Artist') sharing her thoughts on the world we live in, politics and that place between dreaming and not dreaming, in her multimedia performances to audiences around the world.
On October 18, she will be one of the artists taking part in the 28th Macau International Music Festival. Mount Fortress will be the backdrop for a collection of songs and stories about contemporary culture in her show The Language of the Future – one of the latest chapters in the artist’s on-going exploration of the American narrative and how it’s told.
Staying true to her voracious creative capacity, Anderson keeps her projects spinning, and last summer she told The New York Times that while she doesn’t normally say yes to everything, that’s exactly what she was doing at the time – and having fun with it.
One of the artist’s longest standing projects is UNITED STATES PARTS 1-4 (see 'UNITED STATES FIVE'). Started in 1979 and conceived as a multi-media opera, it looks at various aspects of American culture and has been presented in a variety of forms (both solo and with an ensemble) throughout the US and Europe. The next installment, UNITED STATES FIVE is slated to tour in Summer 2015, however the artist seems to find herself in a different frame of mind, as she explains by phone from New York.
Ahead of her debut Macau performance, Macau CLOSER caught up Laurie Anderson early one morning, New York time – as she was sitting in the shadow of the new Whitney Museum in the Meatpacking District, having just returned from a performance in Helsinki and about to depart for Montreal the next day – to discuss politics, breaking habits and improvisation.
Macau CLOSER: What do you know about Macau? Is this your first trip here?
Laurie Anderson: I have been there once, and it was quite a while ago, I think it was the late 90s, so I’m almost going to encounter it all over again. When you are on tour it’s so much of a blur.
MC: Your main theme is storytelling. What changes has time brought to that process – not only in terms of technology, but also in terms of your view on things?
LA: Well I have always veered between the more political and the more personal. I’m not sure what’s the reason behind this shift. I kind of thought for a while that I had more of a sense of urgency when there was more of a conservative thing going on in the United States, so I tended to be more political. But that’s how I defined it in the past, I’m not sure that’s actually true. I think my reading on what is conservative is changing a lot.
MC: You once said that when the conservatives are in power you make more political work, and when the liberals are in power you write more poetry, but that now you thought you had a kind of liberal situation, but it’s not really like that.
LA: I don’t know what I specifically need to be doing right now, but I know that that formula feels a little suspect to me at the moment.
MC: Is that because things are becoming more ambiguous and the lines are harder to draw?
LA: Well, the spectrum is not as clear. What I once thought was quite liberal; I no longer have that feeling about it. So as the world becomes more corporate, I guess I’m more and more drawn away from politics. I was supposed to be starting on a new work called United States 5, and now I’m just wondering if I can even really do that anymore (laughs). I’m getting a little burned out on the scene and stuff like that. I wasn’t trying to make a simple portrait of the United States when I did this work in the early 80s, the UNITED STATES PARTS 1-4. So I feel like I’m not so drawn to those things anymore, I feel like I’m not interested in analysing what’s going on and I think it’s probably because I’m depressed about what’s going on.
I just see the world as I know it, the art world, the cultural world, the political world, is getting more and more corporate. And I think everybody knows that, and it’s not really up to me to point that out. So I’m not sure what could enhance that dialogue to make it useful.
MC: Because if everyone knows it and doesn’t do anything about it, it’s just a big, slow movement in one direction, right?
LA: I think that just because everyone knows, that isn’t a real reason to not say it, because you can always find a way to say it differently. But I’m not sure if I’m the one who can say it differently right now.
MC: Maybe you’re worn out by it all.
LA: I think I am. And I’m interested in a lot of other kinds of things that inspire me to live in the moment, that to me is more inspiring. So I can be a kind of cultural analyst.
MC: What is catching your attention at the moment?
LA: Well, musical improvisations. I’m going to go to Norway next week and going to play with a musician I have never met at all. I know his music a little bit. I think I just wanted to dive in a bit and see if I can break some of my own habits. They are pretty strong musical patterns and maybe just see if there is another way to play music.
MC: That will be quite a challenge, and an interesting and healthy one.
LA: I think so. You know the first time I tried improvisation was a few years ago with John Zorn and he said, ‘let’s just do an improv evening’ and I said, ‘that sounds like one of the most horrible ideas’ to just go out on a stage and pick any key…I asked him ‘well, who’s going to start?’ and he said ‘I don’t know, we’ll see’ (laughing). And it turned out to be just wonderful. I had a wonderful time doing that, it was like building a huge ship. And being able to just turn it around and look at it was really exciting. I loved doing that. I was thrilled to do it and I’m a bit of a perfectionist, and my own shows are very carefully timed, and there’s imagery usually with them. In this case, all the rules just flew out.
MC: Apparently it takes 21 repetitions to break a habit. So maybe after 21 improvs it will be second nature.
LA: 21? Really?!
MC: Apparently
LA: That’s really interesting. I’m learning a Tai Chi form now that’s called the 21 form and it is about re-doing a bunch of the Tai Chi patterns in another way, so it’s interesting…
MC: Maybe they are on to something…
LA: Maybe they’re on to what you are on to…21 times….I’m going to try brushing my teeth with a different hand…
MC: You have likened yourself to a DJ when on stage – with so many things to remember can you still find the space to be in the moment?
LA: Yeah, I’m pretty good at splitting my mind, and that happens to be one of my skills….however, I can’t say it always works because the show I just did in Helsinki was, I don’t know, it was kind of sloppy…they had a series of interfaces that were sliders and screens and touch screens and a few times my fingers just went crazy and there were really strange buttons and it all got really slippery (laughing) and I would pull these giant sounds out and try to put them back in…I was playing with The Kronos Quartet, the group I worked with on Landfall, and they were such pros that they were able to go on as if I wasn’t messing things up. It was a great kudos to them that they could move on through something like that. I was really grateful that they could do that.
MC: Maybe it was just your improv side coming out…
LA: I wonder…
MC: What are your thoughts on China and its growing importance in the world?
LA: Last summer I collaborated with Ai Weiwei on Greetings to the Motherland and it was quite fun to work with him, I must say. I got to do some other things with him, he was really inspiring. I found that the way he sort of addressed his country was similar to the way I address mine, and so we had a, you could say, a way of giving it a certain kind of personality and empathy.
Motherland is a familiar concept, and it has a lot of the irony that it does for Ai Weiwei in that it’s not something that’s nurturing, it’s something that has its tentacles wrapped all around your throat, while it feels purportedly nurturing. I think that’s sort of the carer of an enemy that’s nurturing you and strangling you at the same time (laughing).
MC: I saw your performance with him at Luminato Festival, what other projects are you working on?
LA: We are just starting so I don’t exactly know what it will be yet, but we've had a little bit of contact. I’m a real admirer of his persistence.
MC: You have said that you don’t like telling people what to do, you would rather explain the story, and let them make up their own minds. Is this your own version of an Occupy Your Mind Movement?
LA: No, I don’t have an agenda like that at all, a message or anything like that. It’s exactly what you just said, it’s not really for me to tell other people what to say, but I really do like to find an awake state, it’s really just a way of creating freedom. For others and for myself. For myself, first of all, actually.
MC: That’s the reason you became an artist in the first place, right?
LA: Yes, and also to make beautiful things. Because if I just wanted to be free, I could be a mountain climber or a freedom fighter… and if I had to make a choice between something that is beautiful and something that’s, let’s say, true, (laughing) I would gravitate towards the beautiful actually, because it’s more available to me.
MC: It’s funny that you use the word awake, because you have said that we all live between a dream-like state and reality and that sometimes the lines are blurred.
LA: Yeah, that’s true and I find that walking towards or across that line is pretty interesting because there are things you need to figure out or feel intuitively in a kind of hypnotic state, which you may not be so aware of when you’re analysing things and just living your life in the world.
MC: You practice meditation, correct?
LA: I do.
MC: Is that moving in any new directions?
LA: Well, the wonderful thing about that is that it’s shifting all the time, and whenever I do a more intense practice they say things like ‘oh yeah, we’re all meditating 18 hours a day now, but you’ll go home and you’ll only meditate eight hours, some for two and some won’t meditate at all'. And we (the students) are like, no that’s wrong! (laughing). But the acceptance of forgetting makes a huge amount of sense to me, it’s very human. You get somewhere and then you forget and you get a little further and you forget.
MC: One last question- what would you most like to be remembered for?
LA: Empathy.
Once upon a time…
Although Laurie Anderson and New York are rarely uttered separately, her story started in Illinois on June 5, 1947. At college she studied art history and in 1972 she obtained an MFA in sculpture from Columbia University. Her first performance-art piece was a symphony played on automobile horns, and was performed in 1969. In the early 1970s Anderson worked as an art instructor, an art critic for magazines such as Artforum, and even illustrated children’s books. The New York art scene of the 70s was a bustling one and Anderson was a pioneer. One of her most-cited performances, Duets on Ice, involved her playing the violin along with a recording while wearing ice skates with the blades frozen into a block of ice. The performance ended only when the ice had melted away.
The Pillow Speaker, 1978-79, Laurie Anderson Courtesy the artist and Sean Kelly Gallery, New York
United States Five
Conceived as a multi-media opera, UNITED STATES PARTS 1-4 (1979-1983) looked at various aspects of American culture. After several years of development and touring, UNITED STATES PARTS 1-4 was staged as four, evening-length parts entitled Transportation, Politics, Money and Love. The complete work with musical ensemble was presented at Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1983, as well as London and Zurich. Including legendary songs, “O Superman” and “Let X=X”, the music was eventually recorded as a four-CD set “United States Live” and released on Warner Brothers Records. The piece was also documented as a book “United States” by Harper Collins. In around 2013, the composer decided to add a fifth part, telling NYC-ARTS, “it seems like a good time to make another portrait of this country – and UNITED STATES FIVE will be ready in a couple of years. It will be a two-evening work with flashbacks to 1-4, so I’ve been looking back at that material and seeing what might be relevant and how it might work with the new piece which will focus on the weather, the war, surveillance culture and the digitization of the world." UNITED STATES FIVE is projected to tour in Summer 2015.
O Superman
O Superman launched Anderson’s recording career in 1981 and catapulted her into the mainstream consciousness. Rising to number two on the British pop charts and subsequently appearing on Big Science, the first of her seven albums on the Warner Brothers label, mention her name to anyone today and this is the song they think of first. As much a poem as a song, half-sung and half-spoken, with minimal musical accompaniment, Anderson’s eerie distorted voice floats over electronic tones and pulses. O Superman addresses issues of technology and communication, in particular weapons and planes. It relates to the Iran hostage crisis, which took place in 1979-1980, in particular the crash of the military rescue helicopter outside Tehran—an incident where U.S. military technology essentially let the government down. This equipment or pilot failure, she explains, was her primary impetus for the creation of the song/performance piece.
Laurie and Lou
圖 Photo Guido Harari
When two of the most influential artists of the 20th and 21st century collaborate, the creative world grows richer. When said artists collaborate in life, lessons on love, loss and living are beautifully written for all. Lou Reed, musician, singer, and songwriter, had a career spanning several decades, most notably as guitarist, vocalist, and principal songwriter of The Velvet Underground, one of the most influential bands of all time. When Reed passed away on October 27, 2013, the art world stopped to pay tribute to his legacy.
In an essay on their relationship and his death in Rolling Stone magazine, Anderson wrote of their meeting in 1992, at a music festival in Munich put on by John Zorn.
Paying tribute to a man that meant so much to so many, Anderson described their life together: “Lou and I played music together, became best friends and then soul mates, travelled, listened to and criticized each other’s work, studied things together (butterfly hunting, meditation, kayaking). We made up ridiculous jokes; stopped smoking 20 times; fought; learned to hold our breath underwater; went to Africa; sang opera in elevators; made friends with unlikely people; followed each other on tour when we could; got a sweet piano-playing dog; shared a house that was separate from our own places; protected and loved each other.”